Moscow is ready to continue supplying gas to Europe via Ukraine after the current transit agreement expires at the end of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Vladivostok on Thursday.
“We and the Gazprom company want to fulfill our obligations to our customers, with whom we have long-term contracts,” Putin told a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in the city on Russia’s Pacific coast.
He noted that Russia is unable to force Ukraine to extend the transit agreement and that European countries, which can put pressure on Kiev, show little interest.
In addition, he said that Poland had closed the Yamal pipeline, which transports gas via Belarus to Poland and Germany, and that Germany had not joined the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea.
Russia was the country that stopped supplies through the Yamal pipeline in May 2022 after Poland refused to switch to payments in rubles.
Putin has repeatedly raised the issue of Nord Stream 2, as he did when Russia cut back and then halted supplies through Nord Stream 1 in 2022, ostensibly citing technical problems. This happened weeks before explosions damaged the pipelines in September 2022.
Gazprom, which is majority-owned by the Russian state, posted huge losses last year, and attempts to replace its European operations with Asian customers have so far been unsuccessful.
Talks with China over the construction of a second pipeline have stalled because the Chinese are no longer prepared to pay the prices that European customers have paid in the past.
